I heard a Chinese lady at the store ask for a "rong sreeve poro," everyone was confused as to what she was referring to and finally found out she was asking for a "long sleeve polo." lol.
Is the letter L not in the Chinese alphabet? Because I've even seen on a chinese menu the word "robster" instead of "lobster."|||There is actually no real chinese alphabet. Its all based on characters. Pinyin came along as a way to write out some of these sounds. And no two chinese peoples pinyin is the same.
This is kind of funny because my gf is chinese and I've been teaching her english. She can't say the word "there". She keeps saying "nare". As the chinese word for "here" and "there" is Nar.
Mandarin of course. So I think sometimes they get the meaning of the word in their head right, they just pronounce it like they would similiar to their language.
Because as I've been learning chinese, I know what I want to say and I know the words, but it always doesn't sound right. Even something simple like:
wo xiang yao leung bei pi-guo ...
which is "I would like to order two glasses of beer"
it can be quite a tongue twisting language :)
But yes, the letter L does exist in pinyin :)|||I'm a Chinese.We have problem with "L" in the end ONLY, never in the middle or the beginning. So I can speak for sure the lady in your question is not a Chinese. we can say "long Sleeve Polo" absolutely without any problem. we have plenty words with "L" sounds same as those in the mid.or end of En
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|||They do not have that sound in there own language and its hard to learn a new sound you have never made before.|||That is only native Chinese that have moved to the US. I have many US born Chinese friends and they speak very clear English! I think it is great that she is learning the English language another 10 years and that lady will clearly ask for a long sleeve polo!|||They seem to be able to pronounce it instead of "r", like when they ask if you want pork fried lice.|||My understanding is that it is more a problem for Japanese than Chinese. The sound isn't in their language.|||In all languages, sounds occur in specific combinations. In English the sounds /k/ and /t/ often come together as in fact, acting, doctor, etc. But they don't occur at the beginning of a word. English speakers learning Greek sometimes find it hard to say 'ktirio' (= building) because the sounds at the start of the word don't come in that position in English.
Speakers of Far Eastern Languages can almost all pronounce /l/ and /r/ perfectly well, but if these sounds occur in parts of words or in sound combinations that are not possible in their language, they mix them up.
Here's a way to understand this. The English word 'little' has two Ls. Most of us think of them as being the same sound, but they are not. If you say the word slowly you will see that the tongue position is different for each L in the word. The first L is called 'light L' and the second L is 'dark L'. If you try to reverse the two L sounds a) it's not easy and b) it sounds weird, but it does not change the meaning of the word, because in English we think of them as the same sound. Imagine now that you are learning a language where these two sounds are heard as quite distinct. In Albanian:
djalë = boy (light L)
djallë = devil (dark L)
You would probably get the two sounds confused quite often and maybe not even know that they are heard as different. This is the position Korean, Chinese and Japanese speakers are in with relation to English /l/ and /r/
So be kind to them! It's not easy to master this.|||That sound doesn't really exist in Chinese and Japanese, neither does "R". The sound they do have is somewhere between the two and depending on the speaker might be closer to one side or the other.
What also happens quite often is a tendency to "code shift" and use one sound when they should use another. My wife is Japanese and she's constantly using "L" when she should use "R" and vice versa. This is also apparent when she writes in English. According to her, and many native Japanese/Chinese speakers they can't hear a difference between the two sounds.|||yeah we can
it depends what kind of school age she has
the mother of my friend has been goes to spanish,but she even didn't finish high school ,so how do you hope she could prounouce it in the right way?
chinese l isn't pronounce the same with your l|||They have no L in their alphabet, so it's a new, foreign sound to them, it takes them time to learn it. A friend of mine has three Asian exchange students living with him, none of them can pronounce the letter L properly. Funny since whenever they greet me, they can't say my name (I have two L's in my name)|||consonnants "L" and "R" and the only liquid consonnants in the alphabet(like in "glass" or "green"), they ressemble, no wonder being replaced|||Chinese have a different phonemic system to Europeans so L and R sound the same to them and it's very difficult for them to distinguish the two sounds or vocalise them.
Chinese do not have an alphabet as such anyway but that's a different point.|||they can, i think that lady is japanese, some japanese when pronouncing L it sounds like R|||It's not a sound in their language, so the tongue/lip/throat coordination required to make the sound is not developed. It’s similar to the way that certain American dialects make words sound certain ways – like the Midwestern people who pronounce “hundred” as “hunnert” or “hunnerd”, as in “I got a hunnerd dollars”. It takes concentration and effort to say “I got a hundred dollars”, separating the sounds correctly.
Hope that helps!|||its not a pronunciation they have learned while growing up, and apparently its a hard one to learn. just like we may have trouble rolling our "r"'s, and europeans have trouble with the "th" sound.|||dali333 is right, it wasn't learned when young and apparently it's difficult to learn later.
You'll notice Chinese immigrants can't pronounce the L very well but 1st generation Chinese born in the US have perfectly clear English, as clear as any ones with no accent. So it's not a genetic or physical trait.
I would liken it to trying to roll your R's in German, very difficult to do well but the Germans do it naturally with no effort.|||LMAO...|||heck asian people can't get their tongues straight
i'm not insulting them I'm KOREAN but they just can't get the english language|||The sound simply isn't part of their native language and they're mouth muscles aren't used to making the sounds.
Try saying "Thank you" in Mongolian or "Hello" in Swedish. I had native speakers of those languages laughing at me for 10 minutes after my feeble attempts to get them right.|||Some languages don't have certain consonant sounds, so they find it very difficult to master them in a new language. Think of how hard it is for people to pronounce "th" -- even a lot of native speakers say "d" instead! Some languages may have an R or L, but not in the positions that we use them in. I was reading recently that the reason why we have nicknames like Bob for Robert and Dick for Richard is because the Anglo-Saxons had a hard time with R's at beginning of names and so many French names had those R's after the Norman Conquest. I used to live in northern Canada with native people of the Northern Cree tribe. They have an R/L problem, too. I have a friend named Rhoda who went for years as Loda, because that's how her grandmother, who raised her, said it. If an R is in the middle or end of a word, an N is substituted, like Bon is Paul. I ran a store there and one day, I found that I had one lady down for two accounts -- one under Rosy and one under Lucy, because of the way she pronounced it. You should find a Chinese person who can pronounce the Mandarin word "ren", meaning "man". It is very difficult for English-speakers to say.|||Dude, they write words by drawing pictures!|||Well because their accent is funny and they're used with the language they are using so they cannot pronounce it right.|||First of all, try to be a little more tolerant of foreigners or first generation immigrants. Second of all, to answer your question, NO the letter "L" is not in the chinese alphabet. They don't use the same characters as us.
I don't know where you live or work but it sounds like there's a little something called "diversity" around you. Get used to it, and try to appreciate it.|||this is because of their accent, duh!!!!|||You need to become culturally aware. The Chinese are not the only people who have difficulty with pronunciation, nor are they the only people who have difficulty with the letter L. You are what I call a myopic visionary, you can only see your own little part of the universe. Get a life.
